Van Gundy Revisited

For those of you that just climbed out from an under a rock, Jeff Van Gundy ended an era of rumpled hair and near-unwatchable basketball in New York this weekend by announcing his resignation. In light of this development, I thought I'd take a look at what the numbers tell us about Van Gundy's job in New York.

When I look at how a coach is doing in basketball, I take a look at four things:

1) Did he use the right players?
2) Did his team play hard?
3) Did his team play smart?
4) Did they win more than could have been expected?

I realize that item 4) is almost certainly the most important, but it's also an amalgam of the first three factors, and it's easily clouded by emotional judgements if you don't take a hard look at items 1) through 3).

I'm going to run through each of these four items with respect to Van Gundy, using some tools I've developed that can be used with almost any coach:

Did he use the right players?

I went through the PERs of Van Gundy's players from the last five years, season by season. The only time he really made a hash of a playing time situation was 1999, when after an offseason roster overhaul he spent most of the year tripping over his lineup and figuring out ingenious ways to avoid playing Marcus Camby. But he also gets a mulligan for this one, since when he finally got it right the Knicks went on a near-miraculous run to the NBA Finals.

Other than that, it's hard to find much to argue with. Chris Childs kept playing in 2000 even though he stank (PER of 4.11), but I'm not sure Van Gundy had many other options. This year he's shown a strange weakness for Felton Spencer, which might be the only personnel move he's made that you could really complain with.

Did his team play hard?

There's other markers throughout the stats, but there's usually one way I look at this one: Defense. Teams that are playing hard almost always play great defense. Teams that aren't, dont. A perfect example is last year's Lakers, who were atrocious defensively while mailing in the regular season and then kicked it up for the playoffs, while their offense was at the top of the leagu all year. At any rate, using this criteria I think there's little doubt that the Knicks played hard. Here's how the Knicks have ranked the last five years in defensive efficiency:

Year       Def. Eff.  Rank
1996-97      99.9     1 (tie)     
1997-98      97.5     3 (tie)
1999         96.3     3
1999-00      99.8     7
2000-01      97.5     5 (tie)

Did his team play smart?

Obviously, this one is more subjective. However, there are a few markers in the stat sheet for smart play. How do you see smart play in the stats? To me, you see it in a few ways: 1) an ability to avoid turnovers, 2) an ability to avoid fouls, and 3) taking intelligent shots on offense, which should be reflected in a high number of points per shot attempt.

None of these are perfect, but taken together they should reflect something about a team's basketball IQ. If you look at some guys in the league who don't play smart - Shawn Kemp, for example, or Jason Williams - you'll see they score very poorly in these three categories. Similarly, an intelligent player such as Karl Malone or Terrell Brandon will tend to score highly. It only makes sense that teams will show similar attributes.

In general, the best teams will also rate the highest in these categories, but if you see a team whose IQ ranking is out of line with their wins and losses, you're probably dealing with a club that's exceptionally smart or exceptionally daft.

At any rate, if you rank teams in each of those three categories from 1 to 29 and then add up their rankings BCS-style, here's the five "smartest" and "dumbest" teams from last season:

BRAINIACS   Combined Rank
Sacramento     14.0
San Antonio    16.0
Houston        23.0
Dallas         26.5
L.A. Lakers    27.0
Toronto        27.0

DUNCES      Combined Rank
Chicago        73.0
Atlanta        69.0
Cleveland      69.0
Washington     66.0
Detroit        61.5
New Jersey     61.5

The Knicks were actually near the bottom of the pack here. Their combined ranking of 56.5 tied with Indiana for 20th in the league. (Side note: Isn't it amazing that the Kings were number one in this category despite having Jason Williams?)

Did they win more than expected

Baseball analyst Bill James has a method called "Expected Wins" that he uses to measure baseball managers, and unlike alot of his tools it can be appropriated for basketball pretty neatly.

It consists of two parts the previous season's win total, one part the win total for the year before that, and one part a 41-win seasonm (to reflect the natural fact that teams gravitate toward .500, which is too long to explain in this column so for now you'll just have to trust me on this one). Divide by four, and you have your team's expected wins for the coming season. If the coach beats that total, he's "above par," and if he can't he's "below par." Here's how Van Gundy fares over the five full seasons of his career:

Season   Par  Wins  vs. Par
1996-97   48   57    +9
1997-98   50   48    -2
1998-99   30   27    -3
1999-00   44   50    +6
2000-01   46   48    +2
Career              +12

Van Gundy's teams, over those five years, won about two games more per season than could be expected. And during his worst season, a three-below par campaign in 1999, he redeemed himself in the playoffs by taking the team to the NBA Finals.

Looking at the overall package from these four questions, I think the numbers back up what was my subjective assesment of Van Gundy coming into this: his teams didn't play particularly smart, and that was part of what made them so unwatchable. But they played unbelievably hard, and that allowed the Knicks to exceed expectations nearly every season.

Pot Shots

Yes, Jim Jackson is playing fantastic right now for Miami, and no, I don't think he's going to keep it up ... I didn't see the Phoenix-Toronto game last night, but I just can't understand how Hakeem Olajuwon can be matched up against Jake Voskuhl for half a game and only score two points. Class? Anyone? ...

I'm just so glad that TNT decided to air that showdown between the Heat and Wizards on Wednesday night. Who would want to see Toronto-San Antonio or Sacramento-Phoenix when a matchup like this is available? I don't know about you, but I never miss a chance to see Anthony Carter and Chris Whitney go mano a mano. And what makes it even better is that I've hardly had a chance to see Michael Jordan all year.